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3.
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
The Scientiﬁc Revolution saw the acceptance of methodological naturalism
among individuals who themselves rejected philosophical naturalism.
Both Biblical literalism and natural theology were effectively nulliﬁed in the
Nineteenth century.
There is no scientiﬁc support for the two major claims of YEC: that the
Earth is young and that discontinuities in nature illuminate the Genesis
“kinds”.
American YEC arose in the early 20th C out of cultural concerns regarding
Modernism in all its manifestations. It received its death blow in Edwards v.
Aguillard (1987).

4.
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
ID clearly arose in response to Edwards as a means by which to
reframe YEC. While ID is not perhaps explicitly of religious intent,
it is (minimally) implicitly so and thus risks failing under Edwards.
ID currently consists of “[a] bag of powerful intuitions, and a
handful of notions” – there is no theory of ID – and it thus
cannot be taught in public school science classes.
This leaves the strategy of “teach the controversy”. However,
there is no valid scientiﬁc controversy suitable to be taught at the
K-12 level.

8.
MECHANISM
Dembski: “ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task
to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic
stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and
indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to
try to ape your method of connecting the dots.”
Wells: “I don't think I'm obligated to propose an alternate
theory. I don't pretend to have an alternate theory that
explains the history of life.”

9.
PAUL NELSON
ON DESIGN THEORY
“Easily the biggest challenge facing the
ID community is to develop a fully-
ﬂedged theory of biological design. We
don't have such a theory right now,
and that's a problem. Without a
theory, it's very hard to know where to
direct your research focus. Right now,
we've got a bag of powerful intuitions,
and a handful of notions … but, as yet,
no general theory of biological design.”

10.
PHILLIP E. JOHNSTON
ON DESIGN THEORY
“I also don’t think that there is really a theory
of intelligent design at the present time to
propose as a comparable alternative to the
Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it
might contain, a fully worked out scheme.
There is no intelligent design theory that’s
comparable. Working out a positive theory is
the job of the scientiﬁc people that we have
afﬁliated with the movement. Some of them
are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s
for them to prove…No product is ready for
competition in the educational world.”

11.
PAUL NELSON
ON DESIGN THEORY
“There is something deeply
dissatisfying about establishing the
bona ﬁdes of one theory by
debunking another. Design simply
must put novel predictions of its own
on the blackboard.

12.
ADVICE TO ID MOVEMENT
Dembski’s stand on peer review positively hurts any hope that ID has
in becoming accepted among the larger scientiﬁc community. Publish
papers.
Publish in peer-reviewed journals in philosophy, statistics, mathematics,
complexity theory, and theoretical biology while working on the
“theory of design.”
Generate testable hypotheses that come from the design perspective.
Make sure these hypotheses can differentiate between evolutionary
and design predictions. Test them using observation or experiment.

14.
BRUCE GORDON
ON DESIGN THEORY
“[D]esign-theoretic research has been
hijacked as part of a larger cultural and
political movement. In particular, the
theory has been prematurely drawn
into discussions of public science
education where it has no business
making an appearance without broad
recognition from the scientiﬁc
community that it is making a
worthwhile contribution to our
understanding of the natural world.”

15.
POSITIONS
• Naturalistic Evolution: “God does not • Theistic evolution (2): God set
exist, or if He does, He does nothing in conditions, designed natural laws so that
the natural world investigated by “their ordinary operation has resulted in
science.” (science = methodological the intended outcome. One might call
naturalism) this ‘frontloaded’ design.”
• Theistic Evolution (1): “God exists, but • Old-age or Progressive Creation: God
evidence of his activity cannot be designed laws but also guided process
detected scientiﬁcally.” Seen as “and/or injected information at key
equivalent to Naturalistic Evolution stages in the development of the
universe and of life to design new forms
of organization that are beyond the
powers of chance and law.”
• Young-age Creation: Special creation, 6
days, 10,000 years, Flood geology

16.
POSITIONS
• Naturalistic Evolution: “God does not • Theistic evolution (2): God set
exist, or if He does, He does nothing in conditions, designed natural laws so that
the natural world investigated by “their ordinary operation has resulted in
science.” (science = methodological the intended outcome. One might call
naturalism) this ‘frontloaded’ design.”
• Theistic Evolution (1): “God exists, but • Old-age or Progressive Creation: God
evidence of his activity cannot be designed laws but also guided process
detected scientiﬁcally.” Seen as “and/or injected information at key
equivalent to Naturalistic Evolution stages in the development of the
universe and of life to design new forms
of organization that are beyond the
powers of chance and law.”
Johnson’s
“Big Tent” • Young-age Creation: Special creation, 6
days, 10,000 years, Flood geology

18.
TENSIONS WITH YEC
TERRY MORTENSON (AIG)
Mechanism: “ID cannot stand on its own feet and is not a science of
origins because it has no history to explain when and how the
‘intelligent designer’ worked.”
Identity: “How can ID destroy the atheistic legacy of Darwinism when
its arguments do not and cannot identify the ‘intelligent designer’ as
God and many of the ID leaders accept so much of the evolutionary
view of history?”
Agenda: “[T]he evolutionists are right to suspect a hidden religious and
moral agenda behind the IDM, even though it is religiously vague and
eclectic”

19.
ANSWERS IN GENESIS
“The IDM biological arguments (regarding design and
complexity in living things) and paleontological arguments
(with respect to gaps in the fossil record) against Darwinism
are essentially the same as those used by YECists; only YECists
were using such arguments long before the IDers. ... But
YECists have also amassed a considerable amount of
geological evidence for a young earth and global Flood, which
IDers show little or no evidence of even being willing to
consider, much less try to refute.”

20.
PHILLIP E. JOHNSON
“I want to develop a challenge to
materialistic evolution. Let’s unite
around the Creator. After that we can
have a marvelous argument about the
age of the earth.”

23.
CLERGY LETTER PROJECT
“Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute
and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture.
While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be
authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority
do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many
of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve,
Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings,
and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in
the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to
generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientiﬁc truth. Its
purpose is not to convey scientiﬁc information but to transform hearts.”

24.
CHRISTIAN LETTER PROJECT
“We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the
timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist.
We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientiﬁc truth, one that has stood
up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.
To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace
scientiﬁc ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among
God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully
employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of
salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is
to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the
integrity of the science curriculum by afﬁrming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a
core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion
remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth. “
Signed by over 12,500 Christian clergy

25.
CATHOLIC
THEISTIC EVOLUTION
“It is indeed remarkable that [the theory of evolution] has been
progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of
discoveries in various ﬁelds of knowledge. The convergence, neither
sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted
independently is in itself a signiﬁcant argument in favor of this theory.”
“[T]heories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies
inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of
living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are
incompatible with the truth about man.”
Pope John Paul II, Address to the Pontiﬁcal Academy of Sciences, Oct 1996

26.
ID PROPONENTS ON
THEISTIC EVOLUTION
Dembski:
“Design theorists are no friends of theistic
evolution.”
Johnson: “Theistic evolution is exactly the same thing as
atheistic evolution only with some meaningless, vacuous God-
talk spread around. It's not really an intellectually honest
position at all; it's a kind of political compromise.”
Johnson: “Liberal Christians are worse than atheists because
they hide their naturalism behind a veneer of religion.”

27.
DEMBSKI
2004
“Unlike John Paul II, who seemed to sign off on conventional
evolutionary theory save for the divine infusion of souls at the
origin of humanity, we can expect Benedict XVI to single out
intelligent design for special favors. Indeed, I wouldn’t be
surprised to see Michael Behe invited to an audience with the
new pope. … I’m predicting that Bush and Benedict XVI will
play much the same role in the distintegration [sic] of
evolution ... as Reagan and John Paul II did in the disintegration
of communism.”

31.
“MANUFACTROVERSIES”
“Modern-day sophists skillfully invoke values that are shared by
the scientiﬁc community and the public, such as free speech,
skeptical inquiry and the revolutionary force of new ideas
against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difﬁcult to argue against
someone who draws on these values without seeming
unscientiﬁc or un-American.”
Leah Ceccarelli

32.
THESE SOPHISTS EXPLOIT
1) the gap between the technical and public spheres. Scientiﬁc
experts who can't spare the time for public communication
are then surprised when the public distrusts them.
2) a public misconception about what science is, portraying it
as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady
accumulation of unassailable data. Any dissent is cited as
evidence that there's no consensus, and thus that truth must
not have been discovered yet.

36.
ANTHROPOGENIC
GLOBAL WARMING
“Human activity is a signiﬁcant contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures"
Gallup Poll (public): 58%
American Geophysical Union (earth scientists): 82%
Climatologists who “listed climate science as their area of
expertise and who also have published more than 50% of
their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of
climate change”: 97.4%

37.
WHY DOES THE PUBLIC
SUPPORT MANUFACTROVERSIES?
Sense of “fairness”
Attitude to intellectual authority
Poor understanding of the nature of science and poor
scientiﬁc literacy among public
For ID, three other factors may be in play: importance of religious
belief in American life, overall aversion to ﬁdeism, and a sense of
cultural decay

39.
OTHER POLLS
Belief in extrasensory perception 60%
Belief in guardian angels 55%
Belief in scientiﬁc validity of astrology 43%
Belief in Satan as living being 35%
Belief in UFOs 30%

40.
NSF 2008
“If Americans’ performance in answering factual knowledge
questions concerning science can be deemed disappointing,
the same is true for their performance in other areas of
knowledge … Survey data of varying quality have been
interpreted to indicate that Americans, especially the young, do
not know enough about history, civics, geography, and politics,
and are not sufﬁciently interested in these and other domains
of knowledge that, like scientiﬁc knowledge, can serve as a
foundation for understanding the world around”

47.
LITERACY
40% of 4th grade students are reading below grade level.
Adult literacy ranked 68th in the world.
23% of American adults are ranked at Level 1 Literacy and thus
have “difﬁculty using certain reading, writing, and computational
skills considered necessary for functioning in everyday life.”
“[T]he average Medicaid recipient reads at the ﬁfth-grade
level” (2002) while most health material is written at 12th grade
level.